From the Pit

Latitude Festival: How Firstlight Opens the Door

Helen, my wife, is the music coordinator for Firstlight. Each year she works through a large number of applications and selects the acts that will perform on the New Dawn Stage. These are emerging artists, new names, often at a point in their career where a stage of that size is still something to get used to.

The headliners from that programme then go on to play Latitude. That's the deal. It means I arrive at Latitude with a relationship already established with some of the acts on the bill, and it also means I try to get those artists some decent shots while I'm there. Good live photography is hard to come by when you're just starting out, and I'm in the right place to help with that.

Inside the Pit: Closer Than You Think, Louder Than You'd Believe

The photo pass gets you into the pit. That's the area between the stage and the front barrier, and it sounds like the best place in the world to shoot from. In a lot of ways it is. You're close, you have a clear line of sight, and the stage lighting is often genuinely beautiful to work with. What the pass doesn't tell you is that you're standing directly in front of speaker stacks the size of small buildings, and when the bass drops, it doesn't just reach your ears. It goes through your clothes, through your chest, through everything. Earplugs are not negotiable.

Three Songs and Out

You get three songs and then you're out. Some acts don't welcome photographers in the pit at all, which is their call, and I've missed shots I'd have liked because of that. But in three songs, a lot can happen. The shot I'm always after isn't someone standing composed and in focus. It's the jump, the moment the voice goes up and the arms go wide, the split second where everything about the performance is happening at once. A slightly blurred frame with real energy in it is worth ten technically perfect shots of someone between moments.

From the pit, you can sometimes catch an act's eye. Whether it was my imagination or not, I'm fairly convinced that both Nile Rodgers and Fatboy Slim looked directly at me when I got their attention. That's either true or it's a very good story, and either way it's staying.

The Kasabian shot from the main stage is one of my favourites from any festival. Head bowed, blue boiler suit, the stage rigging rising behind him into a purple haze. One of those frames where everything lined up at the same moment.

After the pit, I have to find my family somewhere in several thousand people on a main stage field. That part is considerably less enjoyable. But the photographs always make it worthwhile.